A statistically representative climate change debate

May 12, 2014

A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.

The study presents multiple lines of evidence, incorporating 40 years of observations that indicate the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica "have passed the point of no return," according to glaciologist and lead author Eric Rignot, of UC Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

These glaciers already contribute significantly to sea level rise, releasing almost as much ice into the ocean annually as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. They contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. Rignot said these findings will require an upward revision to current predictions of sea level rise.

"This sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come," Rignot said. "A conservative estimate is it could take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea."

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148
 
The Daily Caller is a politically conservative[1][2] news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Tucker Carlson, a libertarian conservative[3][4] political pundit, and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney,
 
futurecurrents said:
The Daily Caller is a politically conservative[1][2] news and opinion website based in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Tucker Carlson, a libertarian conservative[3][4] political pundit, and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney,
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Well... glad it all checks out. :)
 
'All experts agree...', vintage 1970.
Scientific predictions from Earth Day 1970:

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist
“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University
“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day
“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist
“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director
“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day
“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson
“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

This stuff never changes. Science apocalypticism is the scourge of the 20th century, and shows no sign of letting up in the 21st.

http://egnorance.blogspot.com/2014/05/all-experts-agree-vintage-1970.html
 
New essay suggesting that if it were not for the co2 released by rice farming and deforestation... we might already have entered an ice age.

We need to bridge another 4000 years.

pretty interesting... stuff...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/29/glacial-inception/#more-110442

“The possible explanation as to why we are still in an interglacial relates to the early anthropogenic hypothesis of Ruddiman (2003, 2005). According to that hypothesis, the anomalous increase of CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere as observed in mid- to late Holocene ice-cores results from anthropogenic deforestation and rice irrigation, which started in the early Neolithic at 8000 and 5000 yr BP, respectively. Ruddiman proposes that these early human greenhouse gas emissions prevented the inception of an overdue glacial that otherwise would have already started.”

conclude Muller and Pross (2007) http://folk.uib.no/abo007/share/papers/eemian_and_lgi/mueller_pross07.qsr.pdf

Ditto for Risebrobakken et al (2007, Quaternary Research 67(1): 128-135):

The climate history of the present interglacial is in many ways comparable with MIS 5.5, and the present conditions in Northern Europe do in some ways fulfill requirements for glacial inception. Even at its present minimum position the Northern Hemisphere summer insolation is, however, fundamentally different from the situation 115,000 yr ago. The insolation fall during the Holocene has been less than half of the fall during MIS 5.5. The present value is also 40 W/m2 higher than the values at 115,000 yr. Together with the high levels of greenhouse gases, this difference in insolation forcing is probably the main factor preventing glacial inception today.



https://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956
 
futurecurrents said:
May 12, 2014

A new study by researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea.

The study presents multiple lines of evidence, incorporating 40 years of observations that indicate the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica "have passed the point of no return," according to glaciologist and lead author Eric Rignot, of UC Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The new study has been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

These glaciers already contribute significantly to sea level rise, releasing almost as much ice into the ocean annually as the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. They contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 4 feet (1.2 meters) and are melting faster than most scientists had expected. Rignot said these findings will require an upward revision to current predictions of sea level rise.

"This sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come," Rignot said. "A conservative estimate is it could take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea."

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-148
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http://www.nbcnews.com/#/news/latin...nagers-sound-alarm-miamis-rising-seas-n114716

The climate changes in cycles that last thousands of years, explained Briceño. Twenty thousand years ago when we had a glaciation period characterized by colder temperatures and glacier advances, the sea level was 300 feet below the actual one. If you were on a boat traveling to Miami from the Bahamas, you would have come across a 300-foot wall of earth reaching the top of Biscayne Bay with trees and rivers and a waterfall running down to the ocean. And 100,000 years ago, when we last had an interglacial period characterized by warmer temperatures, melting Antarctic glaciers and rising seas, Florida’s shoreline was up to Lake Okeechobee, about 90 miles northwest of Miami.

“Those are natural cycles. But what we have done with natural cycles is accelerate them. That’s the problem,” Briceño said.

Recently, two groups of scientists from NASA and the University of Washington concluded the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet has already begun, and it’s causing sea levels to rise faster than scientists had predicted. Some areas could see a 13-foot sea level rise, devastating coastal cities.

Miami is one of the areas in the U.S. most vulnerable to severe damage due to the rising sea level, according to a recent study by the National Climate Assessment.
 
brand new paper...
sea rise since 1807...
its only 7 inches per century.

Abstract

We use 1277 tide gauge records since 1807 to provide an improved global sea level reconstruction and analyse the evolution of sea level trend and acceleration. In particular we use new data from the polar regions and remote islands to improve data coverage and extend the reconstruction to 2009. There is a good agreement between the rate of sea level rise (3.2 ± 0.4 mm·yr− 1) calculated from satellite altimetry and the rate of 3.1 ± 0.6 mm·yr− 1 from tide gauge based reconstruction for the overlapping time period (1993–2009). The new reconstruction suggests a linear trend of 1.9 ± 0.3 mm·yr− 1 during the 20th century, with 1.8 ± 0.5 mm·yr− 1 since 1970. Regional linear trends for 14 ocean basins since 1970 show the fastest sea level rise for the Antarctica (4.1 ± 0.8 mm·yr− 1) and Arctic (3.6 ± 0.3 mm·yr− 1). Choice of GIA correction is critical in the trends for the local and regional sea levels, introducing up to 8 mm·yr− 1 uncertainties for individual tide gauge records, up to 2 mm·yr− 1 for regional curves and up to 0.3–0.6 mm·yr− 1 in global sea level reconstruction. We calculate an acceleration of 0.02 ± 0.01 mm·yr− 2 in global sea level (1807–2009). In comparison the steric component of sea level shows an acceleration of 0.006 mm·yr− 2 and mass loss of glaciers accelerates at 0.003 mm·yr− 2 over 200 year long time series.

Full paper with figures is available here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...13002750#f0015
 
to review one group is predicting sea level rise of massive proportions and the other group did the measurements for the last 2 hundreds years and said sea rise is on average 7 inches per century.
 
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